Part III — Epitaphs and Inscriptions Found in the Catacombs
I
In this section we will give at some length what these (same) catacombs tell us of the thoughts of the early Christian congregations on some of the more important problems dealing with death and with the life beyond the grave, and incidentally with the early Christian view on the question of the communion of saints.
The scanty remains of the literature of this early period, as we have already hinted, valuable though they are, partake rather of the nature of scholars’ researches and conclusions. What we find painted and graved on the million graves of this vast subterranean God’s Acre tells us in simple popular language exactly what the Christian folk, who lived and worked and suffered in the two centuries which followed the martyrdom of SS. Peter and Paul, thought and felt on these momentous points.
The graves in this silent city, perhaps numbering some three, four, or even five millions, belong to all ages, to every rank and order. There are crypts containing the remains of members of the Imperial family, of men and women of senatorial and of the most exalted rank among the proud patrician houses. There are graves of merchants and traders, of the very rich, of the very poor; there are innumerable graves of freedmen, of the vast class too of the sad-eyed slave.
Here, too, are not a few tombs of men and women who gave up all, even dear life, for the Name’s sake, and who, because they professed unswerving faith in the divine Son of God, through pain and agony passed to their rest in the Paradise of God.
Some of the ruined graves were once strikingly adorned; very many of them being made of costly marbles and beautifully decorated, while around these sepulchral memorials of the great and wealthy are found numberless graves roughly though lovingly fashioned.
Of the epitaphs and inscriptions carved and painted on these graves, some are exquisitely worked, evidently by professional artists. Many more, however, were rudely and hurriedly painted or scratched on the plaster or stone tablet which closed in the shelf in the wall in which the dead was laid.
The inscriptions are for the most part in Latin, but in the first and in much of the second century the words are often in Greek. In some instances the two languages are curiously mingled, the epitaph beginning in one tongue and ending in another: occasionally the Latin words are written in Greek characters.
Various corrupt ways of spelling are not unusual, the ordinary rules of grammar are not unfrequently broken. Indeed, as is observable in some of the Latin poetry of the early Christian centuries where the rules of classical prosody are ignored, so here in the prose used by the children of the people a similar disregard of language and spelling is observable. It was the beginning of the popular patois which eventually crystallized into modern Italian.
There is a curious and interesting difference between the epitaphs of the catacombs written when Christianity was a proscribed religion, when those who embraced it were liable to more or less bitter persecution, and the epitaphs of the latter years of the fourth as of the following centuries. Men wrote in those first three Christian centuries in the dark and lonely corridors and chambers where their loved dead were laid, not for any human eye to read, save their own when they visited that sacred God’s Acre,—just a name—or an emblem of their dearest hopes, a little picture of the Good Shepherd and His sheep, a word or two of sure hope and joyous confidence in the eternal future—and nothing more. Very short, very simple, very touching are these early Christian epitaphs. The great and noble set out no pompous statement of the rank and position of their dead: we read little of the piety and goodness of the many saintly ones whose remains rested in those long silent corridors.
But in the cemeteries (mostly above ground) of the last years of the fourth and in the following centuries, when the Church enjoyed peace, and when a different spirit brooded over the works and days of Christians, we begin to meet with those foolish tasteless phrases which as time went on became more and more in fashion, telling of the dead one’s rank and position, of the goodness and holiness and devotion of the deceased.
Dean Stanley quotes an epitaph in the cloisters of his loved Abbey of Westminster, which he says reminded him of the catacomb inscriptions in a way which none other of the pompous and elaborate epitaphs in that noble English home of the great dead had done. It is of a little girl, and runs thus:
“Jane Lister · deare childe.”
The first and most prominent feature in the life of the Christians of the first three centuries which the inscriptions of the catacombs make clear to us was their intense conviction of the reality of the future life.
The epitaphs speak of the dead as though they were still living. They talk to the dead. They felt that there was a communion still existing with them—between them and the survivors—a communion carried on under new conditions, and finding its consolation in incessant mutual prayer.
They were assured that the soul of the departed was united with the saints—that it was with God, and in the enjoyment of peace, happiness, rest; so often the little epitaph breathes a humble and loving prayer that they, the survivors, might soon be admitted to a participation in these blessings. Sometimes the survivors invoked the help of the prayers of the departed, since they knew that the soul of the departed lived in God and with God; they thought that the prayers of a soul in the presence of God would be a help—must be a help—to those whose time of trial was not yet ended.
Dr. Northcote well summarizes all this: “In a word, they realized most intensely that all the faithful, whether in the body or out of the body, were still living members of one mystical body, the body of Christ; that they formed one great family, knit together in the closest bonds of love; and that this love, stronger than death, had its proper work and happiness in prayer—prayer of the survivors for those who had gone before, prayer of the blessed for those who were left behind.” (Epitaphs of the Catacombs, chap. v.)
This deeply rooted belief in the life beyond the grave; this intense conviction that the division between this life and the life beyond the grave does not sever the claim of affection and love, never interrupt—no, not for an hour—the interchange of loving offices.
We will quote a very few of the older epitaphs painted or graved upon the marble or stone tablet or on the thick plaster-work which closed in the shelf in which the dead were deposited.
On some of these tablets we read simply the name of the dead; on others the name is accompanied with a Christian emblem, such as an anchor, the mystic fish, the ἰχθύς—each letter of which refers closely to the Saviour: (ι) Jesus, (χ) Christ, (θ) God, (ύ) the Son, (ς) the Saviour; the palm branch, the token of the victory over death; the dove, symbol of a Christian soul, occasionally of the Holy Ghost; this dove or bird was a favourite emblem of the soul, the idea being that the soul resembled a bird of passage dwelling for a season here and then flying away beyond the seas to a brighter, serener home. Very often we come upon the figure of the Good Shepherd, sometimes with a lamb in His arms.